St. Paul daily globe., 1887-10-23


desirable young man. Now the period
of giddy girlhood stretches beyond the
quarter-century limit. and as many as
thirty years are required to furnish
female with the diploma of the SpinSter
class, says writer in the st. Louis
POSt-Dispatch. And it is very, very
seldom that you hear the epithet ap
piled even to woman who has arrived
at the age of thirty. The sting and
stigma, too, have left the term, and when
the words are used they don't seem to
sound one-half or one-tenth SO bad as
shey sounded fifteen or twenty years ago.
There was something reprOachful in
she expression then; some suggestion of
derlSlon, and comic valentines, ,0n which
antlque-looking DANES were pictured
chewing the bitter cud of disappOint-
ment and discomfort, were in great de-
mand. Now the valentine hangs lone
some and unSought in the fy-blown
Show-window of the stationery store,
and the old maid has come to be looked
upon as a being to be respected and
cherished. She is regarded as heroine
In her way. and the devoutest kind of
homage is offered at her shrine. She is
reverenced as a monument of American
independence. and there is nothing but
pity for the chippieS and the elegant
young dudineS who are rash enough
to mock her.
SOME QUERIES ANSWERED.
Why is this? What has caused such
wonderful revulSion of public feeling?
Who rolled back the stone from the sep
ulcher of this minated Woman'S buried
hopes and permitted her resurrection to
new and glorious life? How did this
thing happen? And what is an old
maid now and what was she fifteen
years ago?
These seem difficult questions to
answer, but they are not. 1tis as easy
as rolling Off a log to furnish the solu-
ton required. All that is necessary is
to look at the old maid of say 1880 and
then take gaze at the old maid of
1887. A sort of -picture-and
then-on-that proceeding. By placing
the two creatures in justapoSitiOn, the
contrast is readily yercdivable, and the
answer to the punched queries in the
last paragraph comes simply enough.
Formerly when girl left school and
passed through social season or two.
which brought her to the age of nineteen
or twenty, she had nothing to do to vary
the mOnOtony of her existence except get
married or go into a convent if she
wanted to retain the friendship and
affection of her circle of acquaintances.
Had she any desire to be independent,
or to resist the antagOniStic influences
which attracted her either in the dIrec-
tion of the hymeneal altar or towards a
nunrery. no course was left but to re-
tire INTO the midst of her immediate fam
lily and learn to darn stockings, sew
patches Oh old clothes or work embro;d-
cry.
THE CRISIS IN HER CAREER.
The time of her retirement may have
been delayed, but the social circle lest
her eventually; she faded out of the
memories of the merry folk with whom
she formerly rOmped and routed, and
the neighbOrS at last began to call her
an old maid. Stories of her broken
heart got afioat, of her blighted love
and of a thousand other equally ridicu-
lous, sentimental things, and human
sympathy was wasted upon the COM
paniOnless, forlorn and presumably
pining creature in manner that spoke
eloquently of the SoftneSs of the hearts
in which it had its source. After the
first fiOod-tideS of imagination had sub
sided and as the years advanced the old
maid became mystery. If her circum-
stances in life were not such as to JUS
tify her in cOnfining herself to home
duties, she. i'll time, took to earning her
own living and almost invariably turned
up in dreSSmaking or in some other
place where her skill with the needle
n
the days mingled and the months
blended she gradually faded into con-
firmed SpinSterhOOd, and when she died
few missed her, and fewer knew any,
thing of the life record which her thin
and worn fingers had written with her
busy, restless needle.
The class was common not so long
ago. Everybody knew what was meant
when prim and prudiSh creature in
Skimp but modest skirts was called an
old maid. 1t meant woman who had
failed to catch husband, and who was
supporting herself, and perhaps sec
tion OF her family, by such arts and ac-
cOmpliShmentS as she possessed, and for
which there was a.limited market.
TWO TERRIBLE WORDS.
The two words carried force and in
depreciation that could not be mistaken.
They were construed from the cruel
and heartless standpoint of conquering
man, who fiaunted them in evidence of
the triumph of all his sex over one weak
woman. The old maid was target for
every kind of ridicule. The newspaper
wits made constant mockery of her.
The minstrelS used her name to provoke
laughter. Even the more fortunate
members of her own sex pointed
the finger of scorn at her and
swept Scornfully by when it became
necessary to remind the poor, lonely,
loge-bereft creature that she had failed
TO catch on'' in the world. She was
represented as looking nervously under
the bed at night for man-not because
she was afraid of him, as one fun-ierker
explained, but that she might lock the
door to prevent his escape if a mon was
really there. And then, who does not
remember with pain that frightfulest
of all libeiS on the oldest members of
the sisternity-whichm makes a woman of
twenty eXclaim when mention is made
of man: ''What is hep" while a woman
of thirty mildly inquiries: ''Who is he?''
"Where is hep" All these things are
now, in the language of the street,
chestnuts. But they were fresh and
fiavory fifteen years ago, and everybody
appeared to relish and enjoy them ex-
cept the old maids themselves.
NO MORE OLD MAIDS.
To-day there is not a SO-called old
maid in st. Louis with whom MANY
young wives would not willingly and
gladly change places. Husband-hunt-
Ing is no longer the occupation and hus-
band-getting the ambition of all Young
women. When school books are now
laid aside and the serious years of life
begin, a young girl is not compelled To
hide her talents under the family hearth
stone, simply because she does not care
to marry. A hundred invitations to
honest and honorable employment are
at hand, where formerly there was not
one; and not single line of occupation
open TO man, if the heavy, manual and
mechanical trades be excepted, is closed
against her. She has burst through the
rose chains of sentiment and placed her
self beside the Sterner sex in the battle
of life, and every rampant has Welded.
every garrison has capitulated.
At first it was hard and bitter